Claustrophobia!

Me and the GGF went on a recent trip to her home city in Germany to coincide with her sister and brother-in-law who were also visiting. Searching for a pub in which to catch up over, the sister's husband suggests the one and only gay bar in the city.

Both me and the GGF responded with a very firm unified 'NO!'

The sister called us snobs and the husband responded with a valid point of "if you don't support the only one you have, you won't get a second!"

Our stance not changing he throws up his hands. "Well, it's your culture!"

My reasons for not wanting to go was simply that it was a venue that for some reason was exempt from the smoking ban and so the thought, as a  non-smoker sitting in a small venue full of chain smokers was quite horrendous.

But increasingly I have withdrawn from 'the scene' here in Brighton with the thought of heading out to the local dyke bar equally as horrendous. For a lesbian this would seem quite normal once you're in a steady relationship except in my case that's not the reason. I simply find it too claustrophobic.

The girls scene is rather like a pack of cards being shuffled for a game of poker, with your entire history constantly surrounding you, reshuffled and shared out just like the cards. Exes and enemies are hooking up together or now sleeping with your best friend or your flatmate or your girlfriend's flatmate whilst everyone tries to keep a poker face whether it's to act all British with a 'stiff upper lip' about it all or simply because lesbians have no moral code and won't accept they're doing anything wrong in their lack of boundaries.

Photo by Alan Cleaver - Flickr

I was recently reading a blog post about getting started in humanitarian aid work as I've wanted to work in International Development since I was young. Love, life and being gay* stopping me. What made me chuckle when reading the post was the question you apparently get asked by aid agencies when starting out -

"What are you running from?"


Well I'm not about to run anywhere just yet... the next hand is yet to be dealt.



*VSO said they couldn't place me overseas when I approached them in 2002 as a lesbian in a relationship as they couldn't guarantee my safety - admittedly they only worked in countries where you faced death by hanging, stoning or correction rape for homosexuality. Apparently they do now send out gay individuals overseas - I hear there's a quite a few in Cambodia!